Background: Large-scale climate conditions force local environmental conditions, and these determine the living conditions and lives of organims. Therefore, the continuously-growing hard structures of an organism not only reflect its growth history, but also serve as archives of environmental conditions during its life. In the terrestrial realm, trees are used as such “biorecorders” (dendrochronology), whereas in the marine realm organisms with carbonate structures such as corals, molluscs and finfish serve the same purpose (sclerorochronology). From the morphological growth record, we infer living conditions as well as population and ecosystem performance. From carbonate biogeochemistry, we derive time series of environmental parameter proxies, i.e. stable isotope ratios and trace metal concentrations.

In the long term, we aim to build a web-based analysis tool that allows the community to integrate and correlate newly digitized instrumental data, model reanalyses and reconstructions, and high-resolution proxy data from biological and climate data. We will use this tool to investigate changes in the major modes of climate and their teleconnections.

This project will target one long-lived bivalve species living throughout the northern boreal Atlantic. We will explore the suitability of this animal as a “biorecorder” by comparing growth performance and biogeochemical parametres is space and time. In particular, we will evaluate (i) small scale spatial variability and its links to small scale hydrographic variablitlity, (ii) large scale variability between populations as distant sites, and (iii) long term variability (trends and oscillations) and its relationship to abiotic drivers at local, regional and global scales.